FROM THIS EPISODE

Postmodernism was a colorful reaction to Modernism’s high seriousness. Now Matthew Sullivan and a new generation of designers are revisiting the attitude, the aesthetics, and the arcane theory of the rebel designers post-68. Maura Lucking and Matthew Sullivan discuss why. And, Matt Holzman explores a Santa Monica development that almost destroyed the Santa Monica Pier and moved a community from right to left.

Banner image: Display of work by Matthew Sullivan of AQQ Design at the KCRW/Helms Celebration of Design. Photo: Caught in the Moment

Matthew Sullivan is an artist and furniture designer based in LA and he has his own firm, Al Que Quiere – loosely translated from the Latin, "for he who wants it." Maura Lucking talks with Sullivan and Frances Anderton about his brightly colored, toy-like work and how it fits into a broader design revival, in which young designers are looking for a new form of expression that doesn't take itself as seriously as the high-minded work inspired by LA's mid-century Modern.

In the late 1960's, Santa Monica, in Southern California, was literally growing up. And then there were plans to build The Island, a proposed man-made, 35-acre island, right off the beach, connected to the mainland by a sinuous automobile causeway.But building the island would mean destroying the Santa Monica Pier and the fight to save the beloved pier would transform Santa Monica, as we hear from KCRW's Matt Holzman.